Romance Classics (27 page)
She was sobbing a little, and Peter’s arms closed about her and held her very close. After an interval that might have been moments, or could have been hours, she looked up at him, radiant.
“Oh, Peter, what a lot of time we’ve wasted! It should have been like this when you stepped off the train,” she told him. Then she grinned and added unexpectedly, “I adore Bo Norris.”
“Oh. So it’s like that, is it?”
“Next to you, I mean. Bo, bless him, made you see things you refused to see. And now — when are we going to be married?”
Peter laughed. “Wait a minute, you forward creature.
I’m
supposed to ask you that!”
“Then go ahead and ask me, so I can say tomorrow, or the next day at the very latest!”
Peter’s answer was to hold her still closer in his arms. But it seemed quite enough to Betsy.
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 1968 by Peggy Gaddis
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7414-6
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7414-6
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7413-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7413-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
Peggy Gaddis
Avon, Massachusetts
One
The door burst open and Betty flung herself into the room, then came to a dead stop as she saw Lynn busily packing a suitcase.
“Oh, Lynn,” she wailed, “you’re really leaving!”
“Well, of course, silly,” Lynn answered cheerfully. “I told you all along that as soon as we graduated, I was going home for a rest.”
“Oh, but, Lynn, there are people standing around offering us such marvelous jobs, practically on silver platters, and we’ve worked so hard learning to be private secretaries. Lynn, how
can
you?”
“Oh, just as easy as anything,” Lynn laughed, and tucked a slip neatly into a corner of the suitcase.
“But, Lynn, I’ve been offered three absolutely wonderful jobs, at more money than I’d ever dreamed I could earn. And if I can get that many offers, you can get scads more!” wailed Betty. “Even with all the ‘polish’ the school has given me, you start where I leave off.
Please,
Lynn!”
Lynn straightened, her pretty mouth set in an obstinate line.
“We’ve worked like dogs, Betty, to learn everything the school thinks we should know in order to become some harassed, overworked businessman’s ‘office wife.’ I’m
tired!”
she pointed out. “I simply have to go home and see Mother and Dad and all my friends in Oakville before I start on a job. I want an enchanted spring away from city noise and crowds and rush before I get submerged.”
Betty dropped down on the bed, and Lynn shooed her off with mock sternness.
“You know the rules, Bet, here in the Business Girls’ Home-away-from-Home, as well as all the rules The Dragon beat into our protesting minds,” she warned. “Up, pal, and into a chair and leave off sitting on the bed — it ain’t refined!”
Betty laughed ruefully as she dropped into a chair. Lynn sighed, shook her head and went back to her packing.
“Sure, I know the rules, and I’ll follow them — in a day or two,” Betty sighed, her blue eyes twinkling. “Did you
ever
dream that it would take so much training, such learning of rules and regulations, such brain-sweat just to be a stenographer?”
“Shh!” warned Lynn. “Not a stenographer, pal, a private secretary — top-drawer type!”
“But Lynn, I’d so hoped you’d stay on and take your pick of the fancy jobs being offered, and we could get an apartment and be busy career gals together!” Betty mourned.
“I want to see Mother and Dad and Bud, and smell something besides gasoline fumes, and hear something besides the roar of traffic and people screaming at each other because that’s the only way they can be heard above the city’s clamor,” Lynn pointed out, and snapped the lid of her suitcase shut.
“Oh, sure,” Betty agreed reluctantly. “I keep forgetting you’re not an ‘orphan Annie’ like me, without a Daddy Warbucks yet; that you have a normal family and that it’s natural you should want to spend some time with them. I just wish …”
“Look, Betty, why don’t you come home with me? The family would love it, and so would I,” suggested Lynn eagerly.
Betty sighed and shook her blonde head.
“Don’t tempt me, honey, I’m down to my last few bucks, and I’ve got to get to work and earn some more,” she answered, and added eagerly, “But you’ll come back, Lynn? And we can have an apartment together?”
“Oh, of course I’ll come back,” Lynn promised. “You don’t think I want to Waste all the hard work I’ve put in on this course, do you? I’ll be back in the fall, and we’ll get to work on that apartment idea.”
Betty’s blue eyes swept over Lynn from the top of the chestnut-brown head to the tips of the slender feet in their smart new pumps, and she shook her head.
“You’ll meet up with some likely lad down there in your home town and marry him, and all the things you’ve been taught here will go down the drain,” she accused.
“Oakville is a town of about fifteen to twenty thousand, where the ‘likely young lads’ get away to the big city to make their fortune as fast as they can,” Lynn replied. “Those who are left behind are either too young, or too old, or unavailable by reason of previous commitments to wives and families.”
“What’s it really like, this place you’re so crazy about that you can’t wait to get back?” Betty wondered aloud. “Me, I’m a city gal, born and bred; when I want to look at trees and green grass I go out to the park.”
“Then you’d probably be bored to death in Oakville. But you must come down for at least a weekend and see for yourself,” Lynn told her gaily.
“Don’t be surprised if I take you up on that,” warned Betty.
“I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t!” Lynn told her, and the two girls smiled warmly at each other.
The following afternoon Lynn stepped from the train at the Junction and looked about her with shining eyes. Although Oakville lay ten miles to the east and had no railroad connection, she still felt that she was almost home!
The spring twilight was slipping across the low hills in veils of pale gray faintly tinged with lavender. The hills were already touched with green, though it was March and back in Atlanta, which she had left only a few hours before, a bitter cold wind blew and there was no hint of green anywhere.
She was so absorbed in her impressions that for a moment she was not aware of the man who had emerged from the station waiting room and stood eyeing her with startled, delighted appreciation. She looked so smartly groomed, so sophisticated, so lovely in her tailored navy blue suit, the white blouse that was as immaculate as though she had just donned it — in short, she looked so out of place on the small-town depot platform that the man was quite sure she had left the train by mistake.
Tall, darkly handsome, quite sure of his charm, he strode toward her across the platform, an eager light of admiration in his dark eyes.
“Hello,” he greeted her warmly as she turned, startled. “If you’re not being met, I’d be happy to drive you anywhere you want to go.”
“Thank you.” Her tone was low, well-modulated, but held not the faintest trace of warmth. “That’s very kind of you, but I’m being met.”
“That’s too bad,” said the man, and his smile was a friendly flash of very white teeth against his sun-bronzed, handsome face. “For me, I mean. I’ve just been told the New York train that I’ve come to meet is an hour late, and I can’t think of a more pleasant way to spend that hour than by driving you anywhere you want to go. My name is Wayde McCullers, by the way.”
“Yes, I know,” said Lynn gently, her golden-brown eyes meeting his steadily, with just the hint of a twinkle in their depths. A vagrant dimple danced for an instant beside her mouth, though she was not smiling. “I’m Lynn Carter. You’re here a little early this year, aren’t you?”
Puzzled, Wayde’s brows were knitted in a frown as he studied her.
“We can’t have met,” he stated flatly, “because I couldn’t have forgotten.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could, Mr. McCullers,” she mocked. “We haven’t met formally, no. But I grew up in Oakville, and since you are our one local celebrity, naturally I know about you, even if you only honor us with your presence for three months out of every year, because of your grandfather’s will.”
The puzzled frown left Wayde’s brow, but he still studied her intently.
“You don’t look like Oakville,” he said so suddenly that she knew he hadn’t meant to say that at all.
“Oh, really?” Lynn’s tone was coolly mocking. “But how would you know, Mr. McCullers? You spend so little time in Oakville, and you always bring down a load of friends and have as little contact with the town as you possibly can.”
“I serve a three-months’ sentence here every year,” he pointed out grimly.
“Oh, but you hide yourself on Spook Hill.” She caught herself, and a trace of color touched her cheeks. “I’m sorry — I mean Inspiration Hill, of course.”
“Spook Hill!” Wayde repeated, and suddenly he grinned tautly. “Is that what you call the family manse? A gruesome spot, isn’t it? Spook Hill is a perfect name for it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. McCullers.”
“Why should you be? It’s perfect!”
“You really hate the place, don’t you?”
“With all my heart!”
“Then why do you serve a sentence there?”
“You obviously know, as the whole town must, that there is a clause in my grandfather’s will that requires it.”
“Oh, yes, if you want to inherit the McCullers fortune, you have to stay those three months at Spook Hill,” said Lynn quietly. “But if you hate it so, surely you’d rather
earn
your living.” She broke off, and her color deepened. “I’m sorry. That was outrageous of me. Naturally, you wouldn’t want to give up a vast fortune, such as the McCullers estate comprises, just to go somewhere and work for a living.”
“I detect a by no means faint note of disapproval there,” Wayde told her. “I see no reason why I should allow the estate my forefathers have accumulated and handed on to me to be thrown away on a lot of organized charities and foundations. So I serve three months of every year at Spook Hill. And if you don’t think I thereby
earn
my living, you are very badly mistaken.”
Lynn studied him curiously for a moment as though he were some rather odd and not very pleasant species she had never encountered before. Before she could manage an answer, an ancient pick-up truck racketed up to the platform, and an elderly grizzled man in a suit of overalls somewhat the worse for wear, his battered hat on the back of his head, leaped out.
“Well, now, Miss Lynn, if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes,” he greeted her, and Lynn turned to him, forgetting Wayde McCullers in her delight at seeing an old friend.
“Stebby, I’m so glad to see you,” Lynn said eagerly. “I was afraid you wouldn’t get my message. I did
so
want just to walk in on Mother and Dad and surprise them!”
“Well, you’re sure gonna do that! They’ll just about have conniption fits, they’ll be that proud to see you.”
Stebbins caught her suitcase in one leathery, gnarled hand, her overnight case in the other and, without a glance at Wayde, strode across the platform and put them into the truck.
“Good-bye, Mr. McCullers,” Lynn said politely, without warmth.